Ferguson Protest Movement Finds Support From International Billionaire

It all began on August 9, 2014, after a white police officer gunned down unarmed black man in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. News of the shooting of Michael Brown spread like wildfire through the African American communities of the city. The next day protest, rioting and violent unrest rocked the greater St. Louis metropolitan area.

The black community saw the killing as yet another example of brutal and unfair police tactics directed against African Americans — even before the details of what happened in the fatal encounter were thoroughly investigated by authorities.

The subsequent investigation cleared the police officer of wrongdoing, however. This only alienated the Ferguson black community even more. Protests became ongoing. Violence and rioting subsided, but thousands of people continued to pour out the streets to vent their rage. Follow George Soros on twitter.com.

The Ferguson Unrest quickly attracted the attention of international billionaire George Soros, a businessman and philanthropist who has long held an interest in grassroots social justice causes.

According to the Washington Times, Soros began to fund local groups that were determined to keep the Ferguson incident in the public eye, and use it as a focal point to raise awareness about historically unfair police tactics used against black people.

To date, Soros has donated some $33 million to Fergus protest groups. His financial support has been called instrumental in keeping the case of Michael Brown alive in the media and within the social fabric of not just Ferguson, but across the country.

It’s not surprising that George Soros would throw his support behind the Ferguson movement precipitated by a police shooting. Soros has a long track record of getting behind minority groups that he believes have a legitimate case to make about institutional oppression directed against them.

George Soros is recognized to be among the 30 most wealthy people in the world. His net worth is estimated at more than $25 billion. Born to a Jewish middle-class family in Hungary in 1930, Soros survived and escaped the horrific persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany after Hungary was invaded and occupied by the Third Reich in 1944.

With great effort, George Soros was able to flee his homeland for the United Kingdom. There he attended the London School of Economics and earned a bachelor of philosophy degree. He eventually landed a job in banking and went on to establish his own hedge fund – a pathway that would soon lead to make him enormously rich. Know more on CNBC about George Soros.

Soros has never forgotten his harrowing early years escaping Nazi occupation and struggling to start over as an immigrant. He has been using his great wealth for decades to support projects like that of human rights groups in Ferguson.